


comes across all shy and coy

by clytemnestras



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: B-Movies, Bisexuality, Character Study, Clothing Kink, Dirty Talk, Everyone In Fright Club Is Queer, F/M, Hair-pulling, Internalized Homophobia, Kink Discovery, M/M, Makeup, Movie Night, Multi, Polyamory, Pop Culture, Sexuality Crisis, Sharing Clothes, Threesome - F/M/M, kinda..?, sexuality exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: So Harvey has this body -
Relationships: Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch, Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman, Harvey Kinkle/Rosalind "Roz" Walker, Harvey Kinkle/Sabrina Spellman
Comments: 34
Kudos: 84
Collections: Start Reading, hekiv's CAOS collection





	1. hey babe, your hair's alright / hey babe, let's go out tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstaudrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/gifts).



> Whoo boy. A kid wears a crop top like twice and I lose my goddamn mind. warnings for Harvey's dad being Harvey's dad (that is to say some verbal abuse)
> 
> There are 2(!) mixes to accompany this, one for Harvey ([it all breaks down at the role reversal](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Lj5uyg0LV2HpLcKS5jGW6)), and one for the Fright Club's setlist ([fright club](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Cqct4am9dNhTrzyZO1Fk1)). All the movies referenced are listed in the end notes, bc I'm ridiculous.

So Harvey has this body -

He's sixteen, and too tall, too big, taking up too much space no matter where he is, his spine always hunched in this insecure curve. He has this body, and Sabrina has this body, a waist he could span with his hands, always warm to the touch. She curls up beside him in the bed of his truck, the moonlight making her hair look paler than it is, and only the dark colour of her sweater and jacket melting with the shadows can belie how delicate she feels next to him, above him, when she presses up against his chest and tips their mouths together. 

It's a slow, unhurried kiss, the best kind, the kind where he can forget himself and get lost in it. It's just that, the warm but constant press of her mouth, moving at a rhythm he could almost sing he knows is it so well. Because it's not Sabrina's body and Harvey's body, all fumbling and awkward and their heights so disparate. It's rhythm, easy as anything. 

Her locket - _his_ locket - brushes against his chest when she moves, tapping at his sternum like its own little heartbeat. He smiles into the kiss, pleased with himself, pleased with how he's found a way to fit her, a little piece of Harvey nestled beside Sabrina's heart.

When they pull back, numb-mouthed and glassy-eyed he offers to walk her home, but she just smiles at him, her lipstick worn away but her mouth swollen red. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," she tells him, and kisses him one last time on the cheek.

His dad is three sheets to the wind when he steps inside, a cruel slant to his thin mouth. He has to lean against the door frame just to hold himself up. "That girl's got your balls in her back pocket, boy." He sneers, body swaying. "And wash that shit off your face before I slap it off. No son of _mine_ -"

Discomfort coils in Harvey's stomach but he keeps his gaze solid, doesn't give him the satisfaction. He's fixing for a fight, the routine so well worn Harvey might as well have _speak up, boy,_ branded across his chest. 

Harvey just steps around him and edges up the stairs, his dad's voice like static behind him. 

Still, there's something about catching his own gaze in the bathroom mirror that makes his stomach clench. Harvey watches himself, his mouth the colour of split berries, of a split lip. He hears himself say, " _Oh_ ," somewhat absently, watches the shape it makes of him. _Oh_ , on this phantom mouth.

Then he's scrubbing it off furiously with damp toilet paper, trying to erase the memory of himself as an alien thing, comfortable in borrowed colour. He pulls off his shirt and reaches for his pajamas, consciously avoiding the cropped football jersey balled at the end of his bed. 

It takes hours for Harvey to fall asleep.

  
  
  
  


Nick Scratch feels incongruous in Harvey's living room. It's the only way he can put it, _incongruous_ , the two dollar word feeling almost sticky in his mind. 

He keeps looking at Harvey, the way he can't bury the panic or find the thrill in the eye of danger that all of his friends seem to thrive on, as though he's some alien creature he'd love to dissect. Harvey keeps looking back at Nick, pushing past the nerves and the bitter taste on his tongue, the taste of _Sabrina,_ and _witchcraft_ , and _fear,_ and tries to pin down the shapes of him. The curve of musculature hiding under his shirt, the way his hair is so determinedly tucked back despite the ease with which he holds himself.

Harvey can disassemble, like a nervous tick. He can see how he could sketch someone and find the shape of their movements, the roll of their walk. Nick does that. Rolls. Glides by in a way that's too easy not to be rehearsed, and that feels like something he should retain, should notice, should covet. Harvey could rehearse, too, if he wanted.

Nick touches the shotgun on the table with a fingertip. "You ever used this, witch-hunter?"

He says it lightly, no weight at all, and yet it still curls up in Harvey's ribs.

"On cans, in the backyard." He says, and doesn't let his mind wander back to Tommy, vacant and silent. Nick almost smiles, but then he shakes his head.

"You think witchcraft is so scary, and you can hold death in your hands playing games in a garden." He laughs darkly, his head thrown back, the same preternatural comfort in himself Harvey has looked upon in Sabrina's cousin with careful wonder. 

" _Mortals_ ," Nick mutters under his breath, but never completes the thought.

After, when they're pressed back against the barricaded door, fear lighting up the dark thing in Nick's eyes, the same as he sometimes catches in Sabrina's, Nick's thigh is pressed up against his, his whole body a tight sharp line. Harvey thinks, _I get it_ , and then the room begins to shake.

  
  
  
  


Roz is stretched out across his lap, her thighs warm against his, and it isn't _like that_ , because her face is screwed up in the same tight, scrutinous way she saves for when she's fixated on a particularly sticky physics equation as she wields the delicate brush. Her touch is so very light across his eyelids, sweeping across in little butterfly flutters that tickle, but Harvey couldn't find a laugh in his chest if he jumped down his throat with a torch. Because it _is_ like that, a little bit. His cheeks are warm under her stilling hand as she delicately defines his lashline with black kohl, just the right side of subversive to fit the tone of the gig. It's just Fright Club, just them and the five people who happen to be curled into the booths at Doctor Cerberus', but he can feel the squirmy insistent pulse of nerves already in the pit of his stomach. 

Roz shifts her weight, a little, her fingertips teasing out the red shadow, and Harvey swallows, feeling his throat bobbing under her fingers. It's the warm body, the proximity, the novelty of _hot girl_ in his lap. He wants to cup her hips but can't seem to lift his hands where they're flattened against his grey bedspread.

"Harv," Roz exhales, pulling back. He wants to say, _no, come back, hold on_ , but he can't get past pulling his lower lip between his teeth and biting down. "Harvey," she says again. "You look like a rockstar."

She pulls him up and over to the mirror, and Harvey's breath stutters. It's artificial, of course, this wild streak of red across his eyelids, the dark ring around them. But it looks - it feels -

"You've done this with Sabrina, right?" His fingers are so light on the mirror as they trace his reflection, as if it were an anxious animal liable to bolt. 

Something crosses Roz's reflected face, an expression he doesn't quite recognise. "Yeah," she says, a little distantly. "With Sabrina. Some girls at Bible Camp. It's good… practice." 

"You're good," he tells her, finding his smile and testing it on this _other_ Harvey's face. She preens, and he laughs, and neither of them dare look his father in the eye when they run downstairs, the adrenaline already hot in Harvey's blood.

  
  
  
  
  


They break up on a Sunday afternoon, a Cardigans vinyl skipping in the corner of his bedroom. A lost look and a curt nod and a laughing handshake on the words _better as friends._ She touches the collar of the flannel Harvey is wearing, soft, baby pink and purple in delicate lines. 

"It looks good on you." Roz tells him. "Bright colours, _soft_ colours. You look at home." 

Harvey wears it to school on Monday morning, his Fright Club t-shirt underneath. Billy and Carl laugh brayingly at the lockers opposite his, Carl staring holes in Harvey's back but really - that could be about anything.  
  


  


  


Harvey thinks about his flannels, staring at the hole in the wall he calls a wardrobe, overspilling with this workman's uniform. This _Kinkle Man_ uniform. The tough material worn to scratchiness. The way he abrades his own skin every day and makes that comfortable. The way he likes things softer in the sanctity of his room, cotton t-shirts that barely cover his midsection but are airy on his skin. 

He thinks about the way he spent a whole summer thinking of dying his hair black to look like Brian Molko. The way he spent the next playing Courtney Love on repeat, tearing holes in his better shirts and never letting anyone see. He shrugs on a neon pink t-shirt his brother came home with, once, the _Sleater Kinney_ logo roughly print-screened on and draws until it's dark out, a page full of sharp eyes and bruised knuckles staring back up at him.  


  


  


Roz bounds into the garage one day, a bunch of DVDs pressed between her hands and a determined glint in her eye. "Guys. Emergency movie night. My cousin Eric at Notre Dame has just got to the new queer cinema module of his film class." Theo perks up, and Sabrina leans forward a little bit, and Harvey fights the urge to fix his gaze on the floor. "Have you heard of the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy? It's _prime_ Fright Club fodder."

She hands a slim DVD case over to Sabrina, who fingers it delicately. " _Sex. Violence. Whatever_ ," She reads, before looking up at Roz with impish glee. "Sounds like a party." 

Roz is right, is the thing. It's perfect for them; the slanting, low budget camera work, trippy candy-coloured visuals, the sudden swerves into schlocky violence. They all spend the movies tilted forward in their seats, screeching at the dialogue and lusting over the costumes. Theo announces mid-way into _Doom Generation_ that _"I am gonna lop his dick off,"_ is becoming a mainstay of his personal lexicon, and by _Nowhere_ Roz proclaims Rachel True her next Halloween costume inspo and Sabrina throws her head back and laughs whenever someone abruptly loses a body part. 

But it feels different to him. Somewhere between Rose McGowan being pressed in tightly between her two boys' bodies and the unmistakable _sounds_ of what they tumble into and James Duvaal shirtless in bed dripping with another boy's blood his breath begins to stutter, this warm uncomfortable feeling he can't articulate knotted at the base of his throat. 

Sabrina smiles at him, after, the alien-ness of her clearer than ever in the evening dark. "You okay, Harv?"

He nods, because language has promptly left his body, and because if he opens his mouth he might have a panic attack or he might explode and neither feels worth the risk. She peers at him, her eyebrows lowered, her mouth pursed, and Harvey has a thousand thumbnail sketches of that on the back of geometry papers and cafe receipts, so it shouldn't have any power left over him, but. 

"Okay," she says, slowly, looking straight through his skull. "Sure."

  
  
  


That becomes a routine of its own, a ritual as regular as Harvey's night time habit of gravitating towards more delicate clothes. 

They have movie nights, girls on one couch, boys on the other, eating popcorn and carefully nursing beers to the point of genial companionship and never beyond - his stomach turns long before the alcohol has time to settle this one time when he spills beer across his sketchpad and has to sit on his hands to keep from hurling the can at the wall. 

Each week someone picks a film - Sabrina always edging for the macabre, Roz for the arthouse, and Theo for whatever low budget cult classic he's most recently stumbled onto. This week he brought in _Hedwig,_ with a sharp turn to his smile. 

"We're gonna end up a movie covers band by the end of this one," he tells Harvey, nudging him between the ribs.

And, okay. Harvey spends most of the movie in a daze, his fingers tapping along to the rhythm of the songs, beer tepid on his breath, his skin feeling overwarm and ill-fitting.

He's singing _Wig In A Box_ in his truck the next evening, on his way to the mine, but doesn't let himself think much farther beyond, _thank god no one is listening._

  
  
  
  


Roz says, "I've met someone," quietly to him in the library before the others arrive. "Is it weird to tell you that? I thought you should know."

They had made sense, at the time. Roz and him. When Sabrina had become something he only half-recognised, the wild in her eyes becoming stronger than he could keep up with. Roz was safe, the bedrock of familiarity making it easy to like her, to want her, though he doesn't particularly like the way that makes him sound in retrospect.

"No," he says, hand stuffed so deeply into his pockets he's scared he might push through the lining. "No, I'm glad you still wanna tell me things. Who's the lucky guy?"

And there's that expression again, the one she'd get sometimes when they were watching movies with girls going to the dark side, zipped into skin tight leather, or covered in enemy blood. 

She swallows, then looks at her hands where they splay open across a hardback book. She's reading _Fried Green Tomatoes_ , which was one of his mom's favourite movies. "It's actually, um, a girl. Another cheerleader. She might be why I joined in the first place, even if I didn't quite, um, _know_ that yet."

Harvey feels hot, all of a sudden, and he wonders if she can see it, the colour on his cheek like a flashing sign, _me too, me too_.

What he does is smile at her, pressing one of his hands above hers on the book. "I'm glad for you, Roz. Thank you for telling me."

He kind of wants to kiss her on the cheek, but that still feels a step too close to intimate, so he just leaves his hand on top of hers until the others arrive, like a weight planting them both on the earth. 

  
  
  


Harvey brings _The Lost Boys_ to movie night, thinking it's a safe bet. They've all seen it enough times that it's practically memorised. They can quote along, Theo habitually throwing popcorn when Star and Michael have sex in a bluster of bedsheets and soft focus and fanning hair.

It's safe, familiar, well-trodden ground, except -

Sabrina brings Nick. 

_One thing about Greendale I never could stomach_ , he thinks, darkly, _all the damn - whatever._

There's something more than just the dip in the couch beside him, Nick clad in knowing leather, the warmth of him beside Harvey an insistent reminder of the night the Greendale 13 came and they had practically clung to one another on his living room floor. He's different, these days. Nick holds himself more deliberately, less of that fluid swagger Harvey had fixated upon all that time ago. Sat on the couch, his arms spread across the back, his hips tilted forward, Nick is doing it _on purpose._

Harvey decides to fixate on the movie, which might be just as much of a mistake, because in the dark hush, the fact of the supernatural heavy in the room, it feels like something entirely different to what he knows.

He wonders if it was always this visceral, David's broad-shouldered masculine flamboyance, the silver glint of Michael's earring, Star, delicate and alien all at once. Was Michael always a pendulum swinging between two creatures of the night?

He swallows, sweat prickling along his spine. It's so _warm_ with an extra body in the garage, unbearably so. He has his flannel halfway unbuttoned before he remembers the rush to get out of his house when he heard the rumble of his dad's truck outside, how he'd just thrown it on over what he'd been wearing to do his homework. His fingertips hit the bare skin of his stomach, just above his bellybutton. He should be okay here, despite the warning light flashing inside his head. Theo wore dresses for fifteen _years,_ Harvey can reveal his midsection. Two of the people in the room have already touched it, softly, delicately, pressed back into his bed. 

It really is unbearably warm - how is Nick still curled into his leather jacket? 

He grits his teeth as he slips free the last two buttons and shoves the shirt off before he can lose his nerve. It's a blue t-shirt, at least, as if that slight semblance of masculinity makes a difference.

He shifts in his seat, arms crossed over his torso, angling for something a little less uncomfortable when Nick glances at him.

He knows that look, the mundane fascination, like Harvey is something to be studied - he's sure it crosses his own face when he has a pencil hooked between his fingers, trying to disassemble something with his eyes to better translate it. Nick looks at his body, then looks at his face, and doesn't say anything.

The expression burns it's way into his skull. Is still burning there when he's in bed that night, his own hand hot on the exposed lines of his stomach, and then lower down than that. 

He forces himself into unconsciousness, after, before he can think about what he's done.

  
  
  
  


The next time Nick joins them for movie night, he's wearing this thing, this black mesh _thing_ that barely reaches his bellybutton. He's holding himself at Sabrina's side, his head lifted, his shoulders down, with a hard-fought ease. He kind of nods at Harvey, a smile playing on his mouth, his canines sharp against his lower lip. "Harry, if you don't stop looking at me like that I may be tempted to blush." 

Sabrina swats him on the arm, both of them bolstered by the other's _otherness._ He wonders if they don't glow, faintly, in the dark, nocturnal animals that they are.

Harvey nods back, his cheeks stinging with warmth, and he thinks _you bastard_ over and over again. "Don't be so full of yourself," he says a beat too late for it to land, but Nick grins anyway, stretching his arms above his head and making the mesh top shift across his musculature.

Sabrina brought _Suspiria_ , a morbid side effect of the childhood ballet lessons, the same way Nick's presence is a side-effect of the desire for solidity. Harvey notices that, too, the way he always seems reluctant to let go of Sabrina's fingertips, even if it's just to sit on separate couches. He's tempted to be offended by that, but then he glances at him again, the way the criss-crossing of black across his chest looks crosshatched to highlight his muscles and suddenly he's not so keen to be sat so close to him. 

It does things to a guy's ego, you see.

Harvey's getting better with the darker fare, since facing it down in his own home, but he still flinches at the jump-scares, even as Sabrina's laughter pierces the dark. Nick does too, just the once, ends up leaning a little closer to Harvey on the couch. Harvey can feel the heat radiating from him, see how his body is tensed like a wire. 

"Hey," he whispers, as Nick turns to him, glassy-eyed. "Are you okay?"

He changes, then, that well worn smirk settling back on his face. "Harry, it's _fiction_. I've stood in the devil's jaws, I think I can handle a scary movie."

He doesn't move out of Harvey's space, though. Their shoulders almost brush by the time the credits roll.

  
  
  


Next movie night, Roz brings _Barbarella_ and Harvey wears his _Sleater Kinney_ shirt, the colour insipid, the cut only barely stretching over his skin. 

Nick quirks his brow, and Harvey does it back and Sabrina smiles slyly between them. 

"Girls, girls, you're _both_ pretty," she says, and Theo nearly snorts out his beer. 

  
  
  
  


Sabrina is different, too, since bringing Nick back. Since claiming her seat in hell. 

She's more… certain. Her eyes harder, more unflinching. Harvey is drawing them a lot, catches them peering up at him from the corners of his history textbook without quite meaning to. She's closer, in a lot of ways, than she's been in a long time, but she's also never felt further away. 

She flashes away, mid-conversation, or trails off to stare into space, like a ghost always haunting the edge of his vision. It's only curled in the garage banging out songs together or glued to the TV that she feels substantial - that they all feel substantial, an echo of _before,_ with the addition of Nick, skulking on the sidelines. And even that -

Even with their little game of sartorial one-upmanship (Nick is in a red shirt tucked into leather pants, today, a faint black outlining his eyes; Harvey in a white vest beneath an electric blue button-down, spattered with gold stars) like an unspoken back and forth, Harvey, god help him, is coming around on the guy. Maybe it's just the habit of him, or the way Sabrina feels more at ease when he's in touching distance. 

(And they do. Touch, that is. Curling up in the corner whilst Roz, Harvey and Theo play through the regulars, or Nick crawling up to her when the movie ends, letting her pull him up and against her to meet in a punishing kiss.) 

Or, perhaps it's because when Harvey has his hand curled around the mic stand, muttering the words to _Awful_ by Hole, Nick tilts it towards himself and finishes the line. It's not Sabrina's style, not really, so Harvey can only assume he's picked it up from repeatedly listening in. His heart skips a little bit when Nick grins at him, passing the mic back, and Harvey thinks _oh no,_ and promptly forgets the rest of the song.

  
  
  
  
  
  


"So," Harvey says to Roz at lunch, his fingers playing with the strap of his satchel bag. "How are things with…"

"Amanda?" Roz smiles this private little smile and tips her head onto his shoulder. "I'm furious with her because she beat me at Scrabble."

"That good huh?" 

She grins up at him. "It's the cheerleading. Lots of spelling practice."

Harvey has always just kind of written off the letterman jacket gang as assholes, Theo notwithstanding, but he likes Amanda. She has that number-one-girl-ism, type A thing that Roz radiates and Sabrina wears like a well-placed accessory. She and Roz have their horns locked over the top place in Wardwell's English class, and he's starting to wonder if their debates aren't just a nerdy kind of foreplay.

He runs his nail along the strap of his back until it begins to catch. "Hey Roz?"

She twists around to look at him cautiously. "What is it?"

He screws his eyes shut for a moment, hard enough that colour bursts across his vision. "I think I might. Um. Be bisexual?"

Roz throws her arms around him and squeezes. "Oh _Harv_." 

"It's whatever -"

"No," she tells him, sitting up. "It's _huge_ , thanks for telling me. Though I can't say I'm hugely surprised. Like frankly it'd be weird if you _weren't_."

He kind of stiffens without meaning to, clinging to her sweater. "What do you mean?"

"I mean _look_ at us. We're a kitschy garage covers band who watch cult classic midnight movies. Between me, and Theo, and 'Brina -"

"Hold on," he says, feeling his palms start to sweat. "What about Sabrina?"

"I just kind of. " Roz tilts her head at him. "Do you not get the vibe that witches are just kind of… sexually fluid by nature? The aunties, Ambrose, Prudence, _Nick_ , for god's sake. They all just kinda seem…" She slaps her hands down on her thighs and nods. "You know what, it's not my place to be ascribing sexualities to anyone. I was _trying_ to say you're not alone, Harv. And we love you whatever you are." 

She kisses him on the cheek, then, braver than he had been, but he can't quite get past what she said about witches, his mind reeling, his mouth going dry.  


  


  


  


When they work out that Nick has never seen _Rocky Horror_ there is a mad dash to get a movie night pencilled in. It's hard, between the girls cheerleading and Theo's games and Sabrina's ownership of hell, though Harvey never really struggles to make the time. He feels like a video game character, sometimes, constantly respawning at school, home, and the mines with little else of the map uncovered.

Still, when the day comes, it has a different tone to before. Because he's said it out loud, now, that he isn't straight. That the things he likes aren't just an unlikely anomaly but part of a rich cultural tapestry to which he belongs. He feels looser in his skin already.

It's easier, somehow, to tug on his tightest jeans and this little red t-shirt that only barely fits - hidden beneath his leather jacket for the treacherous journey downstairs. He lines his eyes in the truck's wing mirror, the delicate light from the porch the only thing illuminating him. 

He's feeling cautiously comfortable with himself when he pushes open the door, just on the knife's edge of audacious, so of course the first thing he sees is Nick Scratch in a black corset. 

"What do you think, Harry? Is it becoming on me?" He leans in the doorway welcoming Harvey inside, the heat radiating from his golden skin. Sabrina and Roz are already curled on their couch, dressed loosely as Colombia and Magenta, respectively, and Theo has his legs up on the boys sofa, the matching leathers marking him out as Eddie. 

"We never said we were doing costumes." Harvey says, flatly edging around Nick and all that exposed skin of his. 

Sabrina looks at him with faint amusement. "Nick insisted."

"Well," Harvey can feel his shoulders hunching, pulling up beside his ears. "It'd have been nice to get the memo."

"Wait," Roz says, "I think I left an old pair of glasses here."

Sabrina grins beatifically. "You'd make a charming Brad."

He can feel the heat of Nick creeping up behind him before he says a word. "I'd rather see him as Rocky."

Harvey narrows his eyes at him. "I thought you hadn't seen it."

"I read up," Nick replies with a pleased smile.

" _Nerd_!" Theo laughs from the couch, throwing and catching popcorn in his mouth. "Now will you two either pucker up or sit down so I can call this dude an asshole." 

Nick raises his eyebrows in mock innocence. "What d'ya say, Farm Boy. Feeling frisky?" 

Harvey's upper lip pricks with sweat. "Maybe _you_ should have come as Brad, asshole." 

Nick scoffs. "Well I never." He purses his lips for a split second then throws himself down onto the couch. "Your loss, Harry." 

Harvey shucks off his jacket then, his dress not quite as scant as Nick's but still abbreviated. Sabrina wolf whistles, and Roz gives him this puzzling look, like she's just worked out the solution to a math problem and sinks her teeth into her lip. "Maybe it's yours," he mutters to Nick, sliding in beside him.

And Nick tilts his head as _Late Night, Double Feature_ begins to filter through, looking Harvey up and down. "Maybe it is."

  
  
  


Harvey keeps feeling eyes on his back. He's switched out his old, dusty corduroy jacket for one in a pale blue, lined with the same soft sheepskin as before. Funny how something gentler in colour feels so much bolder. Billy gives him this look, once, in the hallway, his own shoulders hunched in his letterman jacket, and the cheerleaders track his movements in the halls.

"What's with that?" He asks Sabrina, leaning back against her locker whilst she feels around for a bundle of sage. 

"You're a stone cold fox, Harv, didn't you know that?" She shoots him this stunning smile, one so clearly lined by the divinity in her, one hundred kilowatts and counting. "Plus," she tells him, leaning close, like they're sharing a secret. "You stand a little taller, these days. It looks good on you." 

He feels it again, in biology, gaze heavy along his spine, but when he looks up, Sabrina is the only one looking.

  
  
  
  


Dr Cee books them again when the Cineplex is doing a Romero triple feature, and he can feel the butterflies chewing away at his intestines all week beforehand.

"I'm begging you," he whines down the phone. "You have to do my makeup again. There's no way I won't make it look like shit."

Roz giggles and tuts into the speaker. "Way to have self confidence, Harv. But if you must have a make up artisté you'll have to ask Sabrina. I promised Amanda I'd help her cram for her Spanish final before the show."

"Don't you do French?" 

" _Oui oui, mon cherie_. Ask Sabrina." 

She hangs up on him, and Harvey stares a hole in the wall. "Guess I'm asking Sabrina."

  
  
  


When Sabrina answers the door, she, Nick, Prudence and Ambrose are all wrapped in black feather boas, dancing to _Love Potion No. 9_ and passing around a dark bottle that might be wine, but is likely something far more potent. 

"Witch-hunter," Prudence says with an unkind smile. "How _lovely_."

"Play nice," Nick scolds her, looping his boa around Harvey's throat. "You come in peace, don't you, Harry?" 

Ambrose looks between them, something gold in his eyes, and smiles. "I think perhaps we should leave them to it." He swipes the bottle from between Sabrina's fingers and winks at Harvey. "Do have fun, children."

He and Prudence disappear with a sharp cackle and a flap of black feathers and Harvey releases a breath he hadn't known he was holding, finally meeting Nick's eyes. "I um. More specifically, I came for a make-over."

Nick breaks out in a toothy grin and tugs him in a little closer. "Trying to get a little closer to perfection, huh?" He tilts up his jaw, preening for Harvey's attention. 

"Something like that," Harvey says, nerves pulling at his threads. He's smiling too, only his feels closer to the hysterical kind.

Sabrina pops her pale little head between them and laughs. "Let me get my brushes, and we'll glamour you up." 

It kind of passes over him in a haze of glitter and eyeliner and those feathers, again. Nick spends the hour twirling around the room, picking through the pile clothes that Ambrose has clearly left for them, settling on an open, black silk shirt and those godforsaken leather pants, the boa coiled tight around his throat, whilst Sabrina pushes him back on her bed and uses her small, cold little fingers to make Harvey into something as fey as the two of them. 

When they both tug him over to the mirror he can't stop swallowing, his mouth so dry he could sand a shelf with it. His eyelids are painted in streaking black and gold that shifts and glitters when he moves, and his lips are a matte black curve. He looks -

"Hot," Nick says, hooking his chin on Harvey's shoulder, his breath fanning warmly against Harvey's collarbone.

"I concur," Sabrina says, leaning into his side. "Very _Velvet Goldmine_." 

Harvey isn't sure he can breathe, let alone sing. "Wait." He says, stumbling back, Nick's body solid behind him. "What's going on here?"

"We're seducing you, Harry, wasn't it obvious?" Nick reaches forward a little, his hand settling on Harvey's hip, where it's exposed by his gold tank top.

" _Nick_ ," Sabrina hisses, squeezing Harvey's hand. "We're not… _that_." She says to Harvey's reflection. "Not entirely. We do have a show to get to after all. But, um. Would you be amenable at all, to the seducing?"

Harvey blinks a few times, waiting for the him in the mirror to catch up with the him in his body, the one that is vibrating in place. He kind of nods, because that's in his lexicon and Sabrina squeals _excellent,_ before kissing him on the cheek, and then Nick does the same, because he's an ass, and absolutely fuck Harvey's life, how is he supposed to remember the words, now?  
  
  


  


Stood on the makeshift stage, the midnight movie denizens peering up at him from beneath chalky cadaver makeup, Harvey feels _alight_. 

The music moves right through him, Debbie Harry on his tongue, Prince in his gait. Roz and Theo harmonise, and Sabrina shakes her tambourine and Nick crowds up close to Harvey's microphone, cooing the words like a call and response. _He's been watching me_ , Harvey realises for the first time, hip checking him away with a mean little smile, one he didn't know he could produce, as they blow through a cover of _People Are Strange._ Nick falls to his knees as the guitar solo kicks in, arching up into him, stuck on the song like some kind of magical rite, and Harvey's fingers almost stumble.

He needs the breather of Sabrina stepping up to the mic, tiptoeing through a haunting rendition of _Come Little Children_ from _Hocus Pocus_ as Nick pulls her two and fro, a strange and delicate pas de deux that has the crowd practically hypnotized, let alone Harvey. She curtseys, and Nick bows, and they both tug Harvey back into the spotlight so he might enter a trance of another kind. They close with a somewhat upbeat version of _Lullaby_ by the Cure, Harvey growling his way through the hungrier lines and whimpering on the softest. Nick is once more waltzing Sabrina on the edge of the stage and Harvey thinks of _Suspiria_ again, of movement as arcane invocation.

He doesn't notice Nick back by his side until he hisses out the final note, Nick's nose brushing warm against his cheek. He's caught up in it, the thrill of camaraderie his blood hot in his veins that he's a step behind his own movements, can't catch himself when he slumps back against Nick's side, laughter pulling open his mouth. Nick's holding him up, a hand on Harvey's shoulder, the other on his jaw, and he still doesn't see it coming when when the other boy nudges his head aside and kisses him so hard and fast spots litter his vision. 

Harvey can't hear a thing over the roar of blood in his ears and Theo's drumsticks clattering to the floor. Nick's kiss is relentless, his thumbs stroking Harvey's cheekbones, his jaw, his mouth warm and shifting and hungry. He drifts on it for a moment, succumbs to the touch and taste and the _Nick_ of it all, the adrenaline high of performance and the shock leaving Harvey almost insensate. He's only half occupying his body, only half in control.

Then panic pierces through.

He pushes himself back, mouth still dropped open, and whispers, "What the hell, man?"

Nick looks stricken, for a second, before he straightens his spine. " _Harvey_ ," Nick whispers back, drawing out the syllables of his name. "I have been stopping myself from doing that for weeks. I thought -" He shakes his head and ducks it down. "Never mind."

"No, Nick, wait," Harvey grabs for him as he inches back, but then Roz and Theo have closed in around him, Sabrina somewhere on the edge and Harvey is swallowed up in the leftover euphoria.


	2. we like dancing and we look divine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey & Nick, and Harvey & Sabrina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did only plan on this being 2 parts and then the boys would not Shut Up and it got entirely too long so. Part 3 incoming?

Harvey gets very good very quickly at avoiding the parts of his life he actually likes. He veers between school and home, tells his friends that his Dad has gotten more serious about his shifts at the mines, a statement that makes their eyes turn soft and not ask too many questions. He feels bad about using that, but it's his misery, he can exploit it if he wants to.

Sabrina is easy enough to avoid, flitting as she does between worlds beyond his comprehension, and with Roz he's learned the trick of turning conversation toward Amanda before succumbing to the third degree. So it ends up being Theo, cornering him in the locker room after gym who needles it out of him.

"Dude," Theo says, slamming Harvey's locker shut, for the gravitas. "What the fuck?"

"What?" Harvey feels like he's shrunk in height, lately, his shoulders pulled down to better sink into the self pity.

"Oh, I don't know," Theo punches his arm, mostly playful, with an edge of pain. "You spent weeks making kissy faces with Nick, the dude finally plants one on you and not only do you run away with your tail between your legs but now you won't even talk to the rest of us. I repeat: _Dude, what the fuck_?"

"It's not _like_ that." Harvey grasps for her own fraying reason, something beyond _Panic! Panic! Panic!_ "I didn't know he was gonna - and he kisses me in front of half the town and I..."

 _What if my dad -_

" _Ah_ ," Theo says, lacing his fingers together, voice taking on the timbre of some wizened philosopher. "It's okay, Harv. I get it, _believe me_."

Harvey feels a stab of guilt at that, but keeps his eyes fixed on the tile floor.

"Being queer in small town USA never really feels easy, and I know your dad is… Your dad. But _Nick_ doesn't know that, and I guess he thought - I mean _I_ thought, what with the outfits and the confidence you were… at a different place." Theo presses his hand into Harvey's knee and smiles. "You know I'm here, right? Like I've been here the entire time. You could have just screamed _gay panic_ at me down the phone and gotten it out of your system." They both laugh at that, but Harvey can't quite find anything to say in response.

Theo squeezes his leg again, and _damn_ he's stronger than he used to be. "Cutting yourself off from your friends isn't gonna make this any easier, especially given that we're all. _Y'know_?" He limps his wrist before resting his chin on his hand.

Harvey looks at his own hands, the charcoal and dirt even the longest showers can't scrub from beneath his fingernails. "Queer kids flock, huh?" he says to Theo, nudging him with his shoulder.

"Queer kids flock, baby." Theo grins back.

  
  
  
  


Harvey schedules movie night for that weekend, makes everyone cancel their plans and make sure they're there.

He messages Sabrina a couple extra times. _Especially Nick_ , like a repeated mantra.

He picks _The Hunger_ , because he's a sucker for an 80s vampire flick, and because Bowie and because - because.

He's very careful with the eyeliner, drawing just a little too much in the gloom of his bedroom. He has on this puffy, silky white shirt he found at a thrift store and hid under his bed for a year, and a pair of comfy black slacks. It's all very tastefully goth, and maybe he should have packed _Interview With The Vampire_ , instead, but he's happy with his choices.

"You're smudging it," a voice says from behind him, and when he whirls around Harvey is face to face with Nick.

"Holy shit, don't _do_ that." He says, trying to find his footing, but Nick just cups Harvey's face and plucks the pencil from between his fingers. He fixes him up, brushing it out lightly with his fingertips, and Harvey feels his pulse in his throat.

"There," Nick says, turning his face back to the mirror. "Much better."

"Thanks," Harvey manages, fingers touching Nick's where they're wrapped around his jaw. "I wanted to. I'm sorry, about before. I was surprised, and I freaked, a little."

Nick's fingers are smoother on his skin than they have any right to be.

He smiles at Harvey, this tiny thing, something Harvey would find foreign on his face if he hadn't seen it unfurl. "Don't worry, Sabrina gave me a stern talking to about small towns and mortal's delicate sensibilities."

He says the word so slowly, his fingertips brushing gently against Harvey's cheeks and he can't help but swallow. "I'm not, though." He says, watching this little wrinkle appear between Nick's eyebrows. "Delicate, I mean."

Nick's thumb brushes Harvey's lower lip, making his breath stutter. "Good to know," he says, then disappears.

Harvey is left with himself, with his reflection, something wild in his eyes.

  
  
  


Everyone spends the movie shooting him these _looks_ . Theo and Roz watch him with a concerned scrutiny, and Nick watches him like he's a skittish animal and Sabrina leans over the couch and just. Stares.

"Guys," he says, curled up in on himself. The silk shirt is buttoned up to his chin, but he feels more exposed than ever. "This is a really good movie. I promise I'm not more interesting than Catherine Denueve."

"He's right," Roz calls, without turning around. Onscreen, Susan Sarandon is entering the vampire's house. "It's about to get hot."

Sabrina turns back to the TV, but he feels somewhat uncannily like she's just searching it for his reflection.

His leg is doing that restless, juddery thing, bouncing against the floor, until Nick leans over without taking his eyes off the screen and holds it down.

Harvey doesn't know what to do with that. Whether to push him off or smother himself to death with a couch cushion. Instead he lets his own hand slide down, his pinkie resting against Nick's thumb.

By the time the credits roll their fingers are laced, but neither of them say anything.

  
  
  


He's just pulling his Geography textbook out of his locker, this heavy, miserable thing he only opens to doodle in the margins when Sabrina ducks beneath the locker door and pulls him down into a kiss. Harvey loses his footing, has to cling to the locker door just to keep himself upright as she cups his cheeks and pulls him down into her. She kisses him until he's breathless.

"Mmph," he manages, against her mouth. "'Brina. What?"

"Nick got to do it," she says, pulling back and straightening her shirt. She smiles airily up at him. "I'm just catching up." She chucks his chin then turns on her heel, disappearing into the Baxter High vortex, Harvey still holding onto his locker. He touches his mouth and wonders if it's how it used to be - if he's there in the hall, brushed with her colour.

  
  
  


Nick appears in his room again, as Harvey is doodling the Universal monsters whilst Shirley Manson croons in his ears.

He's wearing a black polo neck under a leather jacket, and it looks at home on him. Or, it would, had Harvey not been used to flashes of skin revealed so flippantly for the past few weeks.

"I want a milkshake," he tells Harvey, like it's his problem. "Sabrina shared one with me once, and it was… nice."

"Yeah, and?"

Nick comes closer and peers over at what Harvey's doing, following the lines of his hands, and Harvey kind of wants to shove the sketchpad under his pillow.

" _And_?" He curls his mouth, and it's not unkind, exactly, but not terribly affectionate either. "Get up."

"Are you…" Harvey has to shake his head, like that will make sense settle about the room. "Are you asking me on a date right now?"

"Yes, Harry, get a clue, your life is too alarmingly short to be wasting time like this. And get off the bed." Harvey feels around for his shirt but Nick leans even further over him, his hand on Harvey's shoulder. "No." He says, decisively. "Leave that off. I like it without it."

Harvey looks down at himself, wearing an old _The Cramps_ t-shirt he begged off Dr Cee after staring at it longingly, pinned to the wall. It's a girl's shirt, and it's too small, barely covers the bottom of his ribcage. "This isn't really for public viewing," he tells Nick, who is staring at his stomach almost as intently as Harvey is.

He cocks his head. "It should be." He slips his hand from Harvey's shoulder to touch the soft edge of the shirt, his hand so hot against Harvey's skin.

Harvey blinks. "Um."

Nick touches his hip, his stomach, the firmness of his ribs, then smiles. "Sorry," he says, not moving his hand. "The petting should come after the date, shouldn't it?"

Harvey manages a somewhat more urgent, " _Um?_ " Before leaning up and pushing Nick's hands off of him, shuddering at the abrupt change in temperature. He picks a denim jacket off of the back of his door and buttons it all the way. "Let's, um. Let's go."

"I can teleport us, you know," Nick informs him with something of a huff.

"Yes, and I can drive us. You shouldn't do magic so openly, you know. The mortals will get spooked." Harvey throws a brief smile over his shoulder, but Nick doesn't quite smile back.

"Does it _spook_ you?" He asks, touching a little muslin cloth bag tied to Harvey's bedframe that Sabrina gave him once, to ward off bad dreams.

Harvey shrugs. _Not like it used to_ .

He hears a clatter downstairs and then a sharp expletive-filled yell and Harvey promptly shuts his bedroom door. "Maybe we should meet half way and you teleport us to my truck."

Nick does smile, then, the kind of smile that could light up the dark and steps forward to curl his hands around Harvey's neck. Before he can blink the touch is gone, both of them nestled in the seats of his truck. "Holy _shit_."

"Calm down, Farm-boy," Nick laughs. "It's only magic."

Harvey isn't sure magic should ever come with an 'only' attached, but. "Dr Cee's?"

" _Are_ there any other places in this town?" Nick drums his fingers on the window, somewhat absently. They're long. He could play guitar well, if he wanted.

"No," Harvey concedes. "Not really."

The drive is companionable. Harvey turns on the radio and doesn't miss the way Nick peers at it, like he's trying to unravel its mysteries. He doesn't even realise he's singing along to the song until Nick joins in, cautiously. It's _Spooky_ by Dusty Springfield, a song they occasionally throw into their sets for Dr Cee's, and Harvey might just have a bone to pick with cosmic resonance, but he keeps singing anyway, glancing over at Nick and smiling.

"I like it," Harvey tells him. "When you join in."

Nick ducks his head a little, almost like he's - and Harvey can hardly conceive of it - embarrassed. "I like to sing," he says to the window. "I'm in the choir."

Harvey almost crashes the truck.

"Oh my god, you're in the choir." He laughs a little too hard and he's almost afraid Nick might hit him for it, the way he's gritting his teeth. "Sorry, sorry. I just - I thought you were so _cool_ and a _bad boy._ But dude, you're in the _choir._ You're a _nerd_."

"I take pride in my studies," Nick sneers, shoulders hunching. "Giftedness will only get a guy so far. I want to be the best, and I'm not ashamed of that."

"Dude no I wasn't - well." Harvey bites his lip. "I was mocking you a _little_ . But if it isn't incredibly obvious by the people I surround myself with I am pro-nerd." He raises a fist and immediately feels stupid, because Nick won't understand the gesture. Indeed, he gets a puzzled look, and firmly plants both hands on the steering wheel.

He doesn't know the words to the next song, and therefore neither does Nick, and neither of them say anything until he pulls the truck up beside the bookstore.

"So," Harvey says, unclipping his seatbelt. "Milkshake, huh?"

Harvey spares another glance at Nick and realises belatedly he'd never even put his on. "Are you mocking me again, Harry?"

"I'm really not." Harvey shouldn't be as relieved as he is to find the bookshop empty, but even just stepping inside makes his cheeks warm, a little. He hadn't quite thought about it until standing in the doorway, that it's the site of - he feels ridiculous thinking _first kiss_ . His _first kiss with Nick.  
_

Nick claps him on the shoulder, seemingly returned to his normal derision. "Fond memories?"

"Shut up and buy me a milkshake," he says, to say something. He's kind of at a loss when Nick promptly follows orders.

Harvey finds them a seat, a booth near the back, closest to the bookshelves and furthest from the windows. He's not ashamed, exactly, more an anxious shyness that he can't quite pull himself over. Besides, he's pretty sure Nick would prefer the view of the books than of the town square.

"Harry, are you trying to hide me away?" Nick asks, planting a single chocolate milkshake down on the table, alongside a slice of Hilda's chocolate fudge cake.

Apparently not.

"I don't like spectacle." Harvey says, ignoring Nick's raised eyebrow. "I'd rather we had space to just.. talk, I guess."

"Talk," Nick repeats, like that aspect of the date hadn't quite occurred to him. "I can talk."

And boy, can he.

Harvey learns more than he ever wanted to about witch holidays - the orgies, the ritualistic cannibalism, the invocation of the dead and can't help but think, _shouldn't there be warmth, to religion? Companionship? Something?_ But he lets Nick talk, likes the soft little smile he gets when he can babble on about something he knows so well. He's showing off. Harvey likes that he's showing off for him.

Nick asks him questions, too. About his big future plans - _art school if he can get there, inherit the mines, scream into his pillow at night, maybe design a house?_ \- and about the things he knows Harvey likes, his art, movies, music, and Harvey can feel himself babbling, too, but he isn't sure he minds.

He follows Harvey to the truck, after, and Harvey doesn't know where he thought Nick would go, but _away_ clearly isn't it, so he just drives home, like that's normal, like any of it is.

"Do you need me to teleport us inside again?" Nick asks, peering at the light on in Harvey's kitchen and Harvey thinks _us?_ but nods, anyway.

Nick touches Harvey's hand where it's still curled around the steering wheel, and then they're both sitting on Harvey's bed, the gap between them from the gearstick gone, thighs pressed together.

"Now I know you're a good, virtuous mortal boy," Nick says, still touching Harvey's hand, except now it's resting high on his thigh. "And you move at a _glacial_ pace." He shifts closer, then, hardly room enough for oxygen between their bodies. "But I think I at least deserve a good night kiss, isn't that romantic tradition?"

Once again, Harvey can hear his pulse in his ears, feel it in his throat. _Okay_ , he thinks, looking at Nick, the curve of his throat and the way his hair curls like a frame around his cheekbones, _okay, I want this. It's okay that I want this_.

He waits, for a moment, expectantly, then realises - Nick wants him to do it. To be the instigator. He kind of shifts his weight, slipping his hand out from beneath Nick's - a mistake, because then his hand is just _there,_ hot against his thigh, burning through his jeans - so he can cup it around Nick's jaw. _Sabrina does this_ , he thinks, with a little urgency, _takes what she wants in her hands and pulls it in, until it's hers._ His fingers tighten somewhat involuntarily in Nick's hair, which seems to make the other boy turn softer as Harvey pulls him forward and into a kiss.

The moment their mouths touch, Harvey feels out of his depth. A side effect of only kissing people you've known your whole life is that they have a kind of familiarity underneath it all, a recognisable rhythm, an ease. Nick is lax against him, pliant, _experienced,_ but letting Harvey take the lead, which feels like a horrible mistake. He tries to just do what he knows, softly tease his mouth against Nick's, his fingers playing softly with the ends of his hair. But then Nick presses forward when Harvey isn't expecting him to, so he bites down on Nick's mouth which makes the other boy groan.

"Do you like that," Nick whispers, softly. "Biting? I'm good at biting."

Harvey can't fathom replying, because then Nick is in his lap, kissing him furiously. Nick must have magic-ed his jacket unbuttoned, because his hands are once again flitting along Harvey's stomach, hot and determined. Nick eases up the t-shirt in a fluid movement, his other hand curled in Harvey's hair. He's just - he's everywhere, every moment so smooth and easy, fingers skating up his abdomen then flitting across his nipples then splayed against his sternum, as if puzzling out his heartbeat. Harvey feels so lumbering and awkward, brushing his fingers through Nick's hair, rubbing circles on his back, just to have his hands do something, but it's hard to concentrate, because, once again, Nick Scratch is _in his lap_.

His hands slip upward again, a thumbnail scraping down Harvey's nipple, and he near enough shoots off the bed.

"Oh my god," he says, and Nick looks delighted.

"Nails?" He says, his mouth ghosting down Harvey's throat. "We're more alike than I suspected, Farm-boy." He tugs at Harvey's earlobe with his teeth, his fingers still sliding across Harvey's flush chest. "Anything you wanted," he whispers, roughly. "I'd do anything."

Harvey's eyes fly open in panic, and he pushes him back by the shoulders with a pronounced swallow. "You shouldn't," he says, pushing a curl out of Nick's eyes. "You shouldn't offer _anything_ to anyone, Nick."

Nick looks at him curiously, like he's not sure whether he should be touched or hurt. "I don't have a lot of hard limits."

Harvey keeps stroking his hair, feeling how he arches up into it, a little, like a cat. "Well maybe you should get some. You shouldn't be… unconditional."

He almost can't believe he's talking. Harvey isn't sure he has ever been this turned on, a hot, solid body rocking in his lap, and Nick's mouth, his _mouth_ . Harvey reaches up to brush his lip, the way Nick had done to him, but Nick takes Harvey's thumb into his mouth, sucking lightly, biting down on his thumbnail and okay, coherent thought feels like a distant memory. He's definitely hard, and Nick can _definitely_ feel it.

Nick touches Harvey's hair and releases his thumb. "You look good, debauched. You should let me debauch you more often. Does wonders for your awful hair."

Harvey does seriously consider throwing him out of the window.

But Nick hums in the back of his throat and presses a soft kiss to Harvey's collarbone. "Thank you," he says. "For the date. I have enjoyed myself immensely." He kisses Harvey again, softly, on the mouth this time, and whispers _goodnight_ against his mouth and then Harvey no longer has Nick Scratch in his lap, or his room, or anything.

He might scream into his pillow, for a while, before climbing into the shower. He stares at the wall, and curls a hand around himself, shuddering no matter how hot the water gets.

  
  
  
  


"So," he tells Roz, his lip so decisively ravaged by his teeth it's bound to bleed soon. "I think I might be dating Nick."

Her expression is kind of pitying in the warm light of the library. "Oh Harv, did you not know that?"

"But -" he splutters, feeling around in his head for sense, or maybe just something like stability. "Sabrina?"

"Do you need me to get you a copy of _The Ethical Slut_?" She looks entirely too pleased with this entire situation. Harvey almost feels sorry for Amanda - Roz is a sore winner, and she's very good at winning.

"I need new friends," he tells her, eyes narrowed. "Normal friends."

Roz grins at him. "You hate the normal kids. They won't watch _Shock Treatment_ with you. You're stuck with us, now."

Theo chooses then to pop out from behind a bookshelf. "One of us, one of us, gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble."

He doesn't mean to laugh. Very much doesn't want to laugh. But he's on the bottom of a tickle-pile, about two seconds away from being kicked out of the library for horse-play, the chant ringing in his ear. A guy can't help himself.

  
  
  
  


Sabrina is sitting on the hood of his truck when he finishes his shift at the mines, her mary janes thumping against against the license plate as she swings her legs.

"Tell me about it, stud," she yells to him, looking over the top of her sunglasses. His locket catches the dying sun, twinkles above her sternum. She's wearing a leather jacket, one that he thinks might be Nick's, and that thought makes his chest feel full of warmth, or something like it.

"'Brina," he says, warmly, bending to scoop her into a hug. He used to hate her being here - seeing him here. He remembers thinking, _she's too delicate, too beautiful, to see me in such an ugly space._ That feels ridiculous now, when she bursts into rooms in swirls of flame, iron and brimstone scenting her hair, but somehow he doesn't feel much better about it. He thinks of her face, haunted and blank, pressed into the walls of the mineshaft in mosaic and almost shudders.

When he pulls her back she's tucked her glasses - 40's style, white rimmed - into the collar of her red shirt and is looking at him slyly. "Have you been romancing our boyfriend, Harvey Kinkle?"

 _Our boyfriend_ . Harvey fails his attempt to not blush. "I think he was trying to romance _me_ . "

She flaps her hand. "Semantics. Point is, I'm woefully under-romanced." She puts her hands on her hips, which should be a balancing act, perched as precariously as she is on the hood of the truck, but Sabrina does this, like she does most things, with preternatural ease. She looks at him softly, for a moment, and brushes some dust from the bridge of his nose. "I've missed you, you know? In a lot of ways that I probably shouldn't have."

"Because of Nick?" He feels a bit raw, all of a sudden, even more than he usually does after the manual labour. His muscles ache and his skin is filthy and he has worked his hands to exhaustion, the callouses only the most obvious sign, but when Sabrina looks at him like that - eyes like tractor beams - Harvey feels worked over in an entirely different way.

She smiles a little more wistfully. "I do love him, you know. He's soft-hearted, really."

He almost says _I don't know that any part of Nick is soft_ , but he's seen the way he looks at her, the way he looks at the space she vacates, like it's an abyss that might swallow him. Instead, he says, "He went to hell for you," and _I just stood here_ remains unspoken.

"He did," she agrees, peering up at him from the circle of his arms, and it could be a year ago; they could be children, again. But her hair is moon-white beneath his chin, a celestial slant to her eyes, and Harvey's bones feel so much older than they used to. "He struggled with it, more than he'd let me see. You helped a lot, actually."

He feels his eyebrows crease. "What did I do?"

She laughs, this quiet bluebell ring of a sound. "You noticed him."

And, well. Given that thoughts of Nick Scratch and his ridiculous body and handsome face and scandalous clothes have been practically haunting Harvey for weeks, it's safe to assume that's true, though she's not sure that's how she means it.

She shakes her head then, pouting slightly. "I didn't actually come here to talk about Nick."

"Oh, really?" He doesn't quite capture the smoothness he's going for, but he's trying a lot of new things, these days. "What _did_ you come here for?"

She smacks him on the arm. "You _have_ been spending too much time with him."

He smiles and steals her sunglasses, slipping them up the bridge of his nose and grinning down at her. "Sabrina Spellman, I am a whole new man."

She hooks her hands around his neck and hauls him down, the same surety she's always had with him. "You can't fool me," she says against his lips, one hand trailing down to touch his chest, feel where his heart is still pounding from work. "I'd know that heart anywhere." 

She kisses him then, warm, hard, sweet, the same way it always had been, but more - the same way all of her is just _more_ these days, as if the length of her shadow in the evening light is closer to her true size. Sabrina fits him between her legs, her hand against his chest, her mouth taking him apart so easily. It's different to Nick, the way Harvey can't stop being aware of himself when Nick's lips are hot against his - it's practically the inverse, he's consumed by her, the pace she sets, the amount she gives. She slips her tongue against his, and that's as far as they got, before, but now it merely feels like a prelude. It's _so_ hot, the way she opens for him but makes it feel like he's the one being prised apart, all exposed for her. She slides her teeth against his lower lip and Harvey shudders, thinking of what Nick said. _We're more alike than I suspected.  
_

By the time they pull back the sun is setting, the sky blood red in its wake.

  
  
  


Roz brings _Y Tu Mama Tambien_ to movie night, because she's a terrible, terrible person.

Harvey watched it once before, late at night on his laptop with the sound turned way down, the door and curtains decidedly shut, so he's sweating before the opening titles.

Nick, normally quietly contemplative during movie nights, spends a lot of it loudly complaining that the men onscreen would have far less angst if if they just gave into their carnal desires, and that these simply weren't _problems._ Harvey isn't sure if it makes him feel more or less embarrassed, particularly when he tires of complaining and moves on to feeling Harvey up on the couch. It starts with his fingers toying with Harvey's hair, then he's rubbing his thumbs in circles across Harvey's shoulders, slipping down his his front to peruse his chest, again, and Harvey really might develop a complex about it if he doesn't end this fixation.

"What are you doing?" Harvey asks in a strained voice as the triad on TV begin to dance.

"I'm bored," Nick tells him, like that is an acceptable response.

"And _I'm_ trying to concentrate," Theo informs them both. "I want to see the hot guys in the movie. Not the hot guy and my nerd best friend getting it on in front of my salad."

"You aren't eating a salad," Nick says, mildly, and Harvey presses his palms into his eyes. Then Nick makes a pleased little sound in the back of his throat. "Oh," he says. "The boys finally got over themselves. Good for them." He tips his head onto Harvey's shoulder and snuggles in, and Harvey's breath stutters, a little. Sabrina turns around briefly, just enough to flash him a - god forbid it - _dirty_ smile, and Harvey knows he's completely doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Movies in this chapter:
> 
> The Hunger, dir. Tony Scott  
> Interview with the Vampire, dir. Neil Jordan  
> Freaks, dir. Tod Browning (one of us)  
> Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso Cuaron
> 
> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!


	3. rebel rebel, your face is a mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey & Nick & Sabrina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks

Nick appears to take their single date as carte blanche to pop into Harvey's room whenever he isn't otherwise indisposed, which Harvey would complain about, except he's currently pinned back against his headboard, Nick's mouth at his throat.

He'd flashed in as Harvey was working out the chord progressions for _Hot Patootie_ to throw in at band practice, and had watched him for a second, mouthing the words, then plucked the guitar straight out of Harvey's hands.

"Practice later," Nick had said. "I'm here for something important."

The important thing being, apparently, tipping Harvey back against his sheets. 

He isn't opposed, exactly, but Harvey isn't used to this. Glimmers of sexuality, those rough searching kisses and heady touches on his bed have always been the follow-up, something to chase the hours of wasting time talking about comics and movies. Nick doesn't believe in preamble, most witches don't, apparently, as if advanced carnality is the witch school analogue to sex ed. If Nick told him he got an A in bondage Harvey isn't sure if he'd laugh or cry. 

It's just… intimidating to have someone so self assured so keen to take him apart, when Harvey isn't even sure where his seams are. Nick's mouth is hot against his, not content now to let Harvey make his kittenish pushes - he's kissing him with the determination of total disassembly. Nick nips, bites, shifts his hips against Harvey's, sometimes making these little disapproving noises at the back of his throat, as if Harvey isn't learning fast enough. 

Never one to back down, Harvey tries to just match him, to push back against the firmness, bite harder, and that makes Nick moan above him.

"That's it, Kinkle," he breathes, pushing Harvey's shirt up and pressing his mouth against the base of his throat. And Harvey has these hands, these hands which are so clammy and stiff and awkward and he doesn't know where to put them but to sink into Nick's hair where it's already wild from the night air. Nick arches into that, and Harvey has been cataloguing that for a while now, the way Nick reacts when he brushes his fingers through his curls, at once soothed but oddly alert. He keeps doing that, passing his fingers through his hair as Nick makes a mess of his neck, something he's too far gone to be embarrassed about until Nick sets his teeth against the jut of Harvey's collarbone and Harvey accidentally balls his hands into fists, Nick's hair trapped between his fingers and pulled taught.

Nick makes a strangled noise, so loud Harvey is scared his dad might storm in, but then he's pressing his lips more firmly against Harvey's throat.

" _Unholy fuck,_ " Nick mutters against his skin, his mouth all ticklish, voice slurred. "I want to wrap my mouth around you and have you do that again." He sucks the skin between his teeth, palms flat and searing as they ease across his chest. "I want to press my head between Sabrina's thighs until her fingers are so tight in my hair she might pull it out, and then I want to pull you down to me so you can taste her on my mouth." 

Harvey - Harvey can hardly breathe. "You… you know I'm - That I haven't…"

Nick grins down at him wickedly, his thumbs teasing at his cheekbones. "Yes, farm boy, I can practically _taste_ the virtue on you." 

Harvey feels like his whole skin turns a warm pink. "I just mean I'm not - I'm not like you. I can't just say I like. Biting. Or hair pulling… or -"

"Pain," Nick supplies, the picture of nonchalance, his fingers drawing absent sigils on Harvey's sweating chest. "There's an exquisite midland to be found on the edge between it and pleasure, and I'm not ashamed to admit I like to press the boundaries of it."

Harvey bangs his head against the headboard. " _This_ is what I'm talking about, I'm not, I can't just. Am I making any sense at all to you?"

"Not really," Nick says with a fond smile. "But mortal repression is not news to me." He leans closer, his nose skirting the line of Harvey's throat, his breath warm on exposed skin. "I can make some guesses, if you'd like?"

Harvey squeezes his eyes shut. The imagery of him, his hair tousled from Harvey's hands, his body lithe and animal, coupled with the rough edge of his voice is simply _too much._ "What do you mean?"

Nick's teeth ghost along the shell of his ear, his fingers once again mapping out the topography of Havrey's torso. "You like to perform, despite the shyness, the same way you make all this art. You like to be utterly exposed and entirely hidden all at once. You are pathologically attracted to your own alienation." He whispers that, his nails once again lightly sliding across Harvey's nipples, and he can't help but shiver. "You like it best when you feel like something other than yourself. That's what the clothes are about, aren't they? The makeup?"

Harvey swallows, because, okay, maybe he doesn't know himself at all. 

Nick nudges his nose with his own. "Open your eyes, mortal. Look at me."

He does it, because how could he not?

Nick's eyes are hooded but strangely alight where they look down upon him. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in all that, the sublimation. But know this - I find you compelling just as you are."

Harvey can't manage anything at that, so he kisses Nick again, softer now, with feeling, and hopes he finds the language in it that cannot cross his tongue.

  
  
  
  


Harvey had thought dating Sabrina when she had a secret double witchy life had been hard, but dating her when she's trying to keep her delicate hold of hell is something else. It had felt like, for a moment there, she would stop slipping from between his fingertips, that with Nick so firmly cemented in their lives there would be a tipping point and she would end up tipped decidedly in his direction. She has Nick to reflect and magnify the unearthly side of her and Harvey to anchor her down, but sometimes he looks at the determined set of her jaw and thinks _too much is never enough_.

He remembers what she had said about Nick - _you noticed him_. Both he and Nick have been very good at noticing one another, noticing the place Sabrina should fill, but so rarely does. 

He finds her in the library curled between two stacks of books that definitely didn't originate at Baxter High, her eyes heavy with sleeplessness. "Boyfriend," she says, smiling, and still glowing faintly, despite it all.

He crouches down, crawls around the books until she's within touching distance and then touches the tip of her nose with his pointer finger. "You are a hard lady to track down," he says, hoping the jovial note of disapproval is enough to cover the thrum of anxiety. 

Her smile is at least reproachful. "I'm sorry, things in hell have taken a turn. You wouldn't happen to know anything about the grooming habits of Pontious Pilate, would you?" She takes his wrist and kisses the finger he'd touched her with, a little sliver of tenderness that he's concerned might be another parting gift.

"That might be more Roz's jurisdiction." He tells her, turning his hand over in hers then switching their roles, holding her wrist in his hands and massaging the pulse point. Her fingers are smattered with ink, and he is well versed in hand and wrist cramps. "But if you need someone to quickly sketch you a portrait or recount X-Men lore from memory, I'm your man." 

She makes a delicate little sigh as his thumbs dig in and looks at him sleepily. "Already my man."

"I am," he agrees. "I'm also worried about you. Feel like you're drifting away from me again. We haven't had a movie night in weeks."

She gets this look on her face, her dark eyebrows knitted together and he feels kind of terrible for saying anything. "You're right," she says, peering down at the books. "I know you're right. I miss you, so much. It just feels like one thing after another. I thought getting Nick back would be it, then I thought taking the throne would be it, and I'm starting to feel like I'm never gonna have my feet on solid ground." 

"Hey," he says, dropping her hand so he can tilt her chin up. "Let me be solid enough for both of us, I'm not going anywhere."

"All _three_ of us," she corrects, and he nods in agreement.

"Just come back to us, 'Brina. We're waiting with bated breath."

  
  
  


She does come back, her hair full of sand and dust and Nick on her coattails, appearing in front of his bedroom window, the darkness making her look all the brighter. She is in his arms before he has time to blink. 

"It's over," she says, against his mouth. "For now." 

Harvey scoops her up into his arms, his hands around her waist, her legs around his and kisses her so hard he feels lightheaded. She's so small and so infinite and he can hardly wrap his head around her, so his arms will have to do. Nick presses himself against Harvey's back, his arms around them both, his face buried in Harvey's neck and Harvey realises this is the first time they've done this all together, not paired off uncomfortably and aware of the missing stabiliser. 

Sabrina pulls back to breathe, her chest heaving against his own, and her eyes are so very dark, her lipstick smeared, and Harvey knows he's covered in her now. He almost shivers. "Guys," he says, and can hardly believe how rough his voice sounds. "We're all here."

"Yes, Harry," Nick says, his teeth dragging softly against the skin of Harvey's throat. "We can count."

Sabrina tightens her legs around Harvey so she can lean down and swat him on the head. "Don't be an ass."

Nick presses harder into Harvey's body and runs a hand through Harvey's hair. "I forgot, we're supposed to indulge him when he says stupid things." He pulls Harvey's head back by his hair, to better expose his throat, and runs his teeth down along the muscle. "Sorry, Farm boy."

Harvey squeezes his eyes shut. "Yes, yeah, forgiven, oh my god." 

He has to lower Sabrina to her feet because all of his muscles have gone to hell, but not before kissing her again more sweetly now, with promise, and she smiles up at him, tiredness banished in favour of the uncanny silver the night always gives her. 

"I can't believe I have you both," she says, one hand cupped around Harvey's cheek, the other reaching past him to the ends of Nick's hair. 

"Believe it," Nick growls, pulling her back into the tangle of limbs, right up against Harvey's front.

"I can't believe you guys keep bursting into my bedroom to accost me." He wonders if he speaks more his voice might spread more even and feel less like it's strangling its way out of his throat. 

"If you're worried about your old man, I'll happily terminate the problem," Nick says, entirely too comfortably, his nose tracing the shell of Harvey's ear.

"He will not," Sabrina assures Harvey, giving Nick another hard look. "But maybe my room is a better bet."

She grins at him, then, and wrinkles her nose because she's a _dork_ , and then Harvey is in her bedroom, Nick pushing him back against the bed. 

"Problem solved," Nick says brightly, shucking his shirt and crawling down beside Harvey, only pausing to tug Sabrina by the hand. 

She stands above them both, regal, gorgeous, _towering_ and Harvey's breath stutters. "You look _beautiful_ ," he breathes.

Sabrina blushes, and Nick detaches himself from Harvey's side and drops to his knees in front of her, tangling their fingers, his head tilted skyward. "Wow," he says. "The boy _does_ have some sense." He curls his hands around her hips, pressing his body up against her. "I was taught to worship he who sits in the throne of hell. You gonna let me worship you, Spellman?"

Sabrina cups his face, tenderly, then flickers her gaze up at Harvey, cautious, and then not, not at all. 

She bends down to kiss Nick hard, her nails tracing patterns along his exposed skin, little white lines that Harvey could draw, or maybe soothe with his mouth, and oh dear _god._

Harvey blinks and Sabrina is in naught but black lingerie, the kind of thing he knows she didn't wear, before, but seems so befitting of her, and Nick is on his knees looking up at her like she's holy, easing her legs apart, holding onto her thighs when they quiver from his breath. He remembers the fantasy, how he'd replayed it for a week straight curled in the darkness of his room, but splayed out for him, Sabrina's fingers digging deep into Nick's hair - it's too much. So he stands, and he kisses her, because then he can leave himself behind, his eyes closed, his body running the way it knows how to do. It knows how to kiss Sabrina. She's so hot against him, her mouth parting on these sounds he's swallowing and he can't think about without combusting. At some point she eases the shirt off his back and then they're all there, half covered and half shy and all yearning.

She makes this half bitten off sound right at the back of her throat, and Harvey's arms tighten around her waist, holding her whilst she shakes, wondering if he's shaking, too. 

Harvey loses himself after that. He's on his back, and Sabrina is there, pressing into his chest and holding his shoulders down, and then Nick is there, kissing his stomach, his thighs. He tries not to read into that, Sabrina above him, Nick below, but it's easier said than done. 

Harvey's fingers worry Sabrina's bra until she snaps it off, and she kisses him the moment Nick takes him into his mouth and Harvey shatters a little bit right there for the both of them.

  
  
  
  
  


Harvey learns a lot, very quickly.

That Sabrina has a filthy mouth and a strong grip and a dominant streak a mile wide.

That Nick goes very quiet sometimes, when his wrists are held, and it's somehow hotter than the filth he mutters when no one stops him.

That Harvey likes it, all of it, especially when they streak her lipstick across his mouth and take turns kissing it off.

(He also learns that a closed door policy means nothing in a house full of witches, because Ambrose pushes the door open, once, grins at them and pulls it shut, and later Zelda does the same, though her expression is more flat exasperation.)

Harvey learns a lot, never wants to stop, with Nick curled around his front, his head tucked beneath Harvey's chin, Sabrina spooned up behind him, her nose cold on his spine. He's too warm, and can already feel his muscles beginning to cramp. It's the most comfortable he can ever remember feeling.

  
  
  
  
  


They plan movie night three days later, and it does take planning, since every time Harvey or Sabrina try to get things done, Nick is there, Nick's _mouth_ is there, pulling them all back toward bedlam.

It's as if now that he has them so decisively he won't allow anything to untuck his claws. It's like he had been with Sabrina after hell, but now Harvey is on his collision course, too, a victim of circumstance and wandering hands. Harvey had thought for a while he'd give anything to have so much focus, particularly with Sabrina always dancing to songs sung at too high a frequency for Harvey to hear, but the attention, the way Nick's fingers catch on his hair, his eyes heavy on Harvey's back… it's a lot.

Even as they pile in early to set up the garage, he refuses to let Sabrina wander over to the girls' couch to set herself up and instead tucks her into his side, between himself and Harvey. Harvey catches his eyes over Sabrina's head, mouths _are you okay?  
_

Nick's eyes turn soft, crinkling at the corners. "I'm happy," he says aloud, tugging Harvey's hand over so he can kiss his knuckles, his mouth so soft against the work-hardened roughness. "Sorry if that looks a little foreign on me, Harry."

Sabrina smiles at them, happy to indulge, then smacks them both on the thighs. "Can we get to work, please?"

Nick had dressed him - had begged to, his eyes pleading and his mouth soft against Harvey as he did so. He'd stood Harvey in front of Sabrina's mirror, scowling at the balled up flannel hanging off the side of her bed and had conjured this diaphanous black shirt that fit snugly around Harvey's chest and hid nothing about his musculature, and tucked it into a pair of high waisted black flares. 

"There," he'd said, smugly, patting Harvey on the abdomen. "You finally look presentable."

"This isn't what I'd call _presentable_ ," Harvey had countered, but then there was Nick's mouth again, kissing the defense right off of his lips. Harvey still feels out of place with it so delicate on his skin, the material so fine and silken he's scared an errant stretch might ruin it, but Nick keeps giving him these headlong looks as they shift the couches and dig out the old VCR out of a dusty cupboard, and it makes his heart stumble, just a little bit. 

"What's with that look he keeps giving me?" he whispers to Sabrina, whilst Nick frowns at the myriad wires sticking out the back of the machine.

"They're his clothes, Harv. He's watching himself on you. Like me wearing his jacket." She tugs at the collar, straightening it out, and then just pulls him all the way down into her so she can kiss away the bewilderment no doubt flickering on his face. _Like your lipstick_ , he thinks, but doesn't say, and hums a little to himself.

Theo arrives twenty minutes later, looking almost elated to see he's been kicked off the boy's sofa in favour of throupledom. "I just knew you crazy kids would work things out," he says, settling on the smaller couch and already digging into the popcorn.

"Dude, don't be a dick." Harvey scolds, throwing some of the popcorn he'd been hoarding at the back of Theo's head. 

He just turns and grins, catching Harvey's next attack in his mouth.

When Roz finally arrives, ten minutes later than scheduled, which, for her, is at least twenty five minutes later than expected, she has Amanda in tow, the other girl very proudly curled into Roz's maroon corduroy. 

Nick kisses Amanda's hand, because he's _awful,_ and then Sabrina does it, too, to dispel the tension, despite also being a cheerleader and knowing Amanda very well, actually. Harvey just waves, smile playing on the corner of his mouth as he presses play on the VCR.

He picked _But I'm A Cheerleader,_ because payback is a _bitch,_ Rosalind, and Roz won't retaliate in front of her girl, and because they could all do with something frivolous after the year they've had. She does throw him a dark look over the back of the couch, and he texts her slyly _you're lucky it's not Pink Flamingos :)_

She does not reply, but does scowl some more, before burying her face in Amanda's throat.

Sabrina rests her ear against his chest, and Nick twines their fingers across her lap and Harvey rolls his head back on his neck and takes a long, slow breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Films in this chapter:
> 
> But I'm a Cheerleader, dir. Jamie Babbit  
> Pink Flamingos, dir. John Waters
> 
> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!

**Author's Note:**

> Fright Club movies: 
> 
> Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, dir. Gregg Araki  
> \- Totally Fucked Up  
> \- Doom Generation  
> \- Nowhere  
> Hedwig and the Angry Inch, dir. John Cameron Mitchell  
> The Lost Boys, dir. Joel Schumacher  
> Suspiria, dir. Dario Argento  
> Barbarella, dir. Roger Vadim  
> Rocky Horror Picture Show, dir. Richard O'Brien  
> Velvet Goldmine, dir Todd Haynes  
> Hocus Pocus, dir. Kenny Ortega
> 
> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!


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